Liril stops. She sits down. She’s out of breath. She has two minutes left on her lead.

“You’re Cheryl,” she says.

The sign clears. Liril cannot see the hand that writes, but handwriting appears all the same, in blood.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Mene, mene, tekel, moed.”

“I could have saved you,” Liril says, “if I’d been what they wanted.”

“I know,” writes the hand, upon the sign.

“You could have saved me. Same deal.”

The sign goes blank.

After a time, it displays a symbol that would have been perfectly polite in many other societies.

Then it is blank again. There are the soft crunching footfalls of a bear.

Liril starts to her feet, but her ankle twists. Her doll Latch tumbles towards the bear. Liril’s arm sprawls out behind her. She looks up at Proteus.

“I have been measured and found wanting,” Liril says. Her voice is calm, distant, and precise. She is interpreting the writing on the sign. “But instead of being divided between the Medes and the Persians, I am destined to be split among the Three Stooges, whose pranks will no doubt be extremely entertaining as they rend me into three parts.”

Proteus glances at the sign, which is once again saying, “Mene, mene, tekel, mo’ed.”

“There is an alternate interpretation,” he says, “in which you are devoured in a sacred feast.”

“I would rather Moe,” says Liril. “He seems congenial.”

“To be torn apart by the Three Stooges,” says Proteus, “is a grim fate. I will save you from it with my own two jaws.”

Liril accepts this answer with philosophical resignation, until Proteus steps forward. Then she is scared.

“Can’t you forgive me?” she asks.

“I’m still dying, you know,” Proteus says. “The boy broke my back. You can’t fix that with construction paper. Also, the paper has ‘anger’ and ‘resentment’ written on it.”

“That’s a …”

“No,” Proteus emphasizes.

“But I’m trying to change,” Liril says.

“And?”

“I didn’t have volition,” Liril protests. “I had to rely on what I thought volition would look like. That makes it pretty good just to get this far, right?”

Proteus shrugs. He walks forward. He steps on Latch’s head. It crunches.

“Porcelain,” says the bear. A shard is wedged deep into his foot. “Ow.”